Abstract
The novel Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, the chronicle of Manassés published on January 15, 1877 and the unfinished mock-heroic poem known as "O Almada" intersect in the burlesque effects resulting from the free and heteroclite uses of rhetorical conventions of decorum and verisimilitude of sublime genres. Aiming at these effects, Machado de Assis mixes high and low registers of style: sometimes he demotes characters, sometimes elevates them with irony, through discursive expedients that, to make one laugh, dismantle socially, politically and economically constituted hierarchies.
Keywords:
Machado de Assis; rhetoric; decorum; verisimilitude; mixed style